Posts by OneEyedJoe

22

are there really 8 million jw's?

by wannaexit in

jw
friends

last circuit assembly there was 700+ present and 1 baptized.. recently there was a foreign language assemble of over 500 and 1 baptized.. in the last 5-10 years i haven't been to one assembly where there has been more than a handful baptized.

at the memorial all i see are the same old faces that have been coming since the flood.. the hall complex i attend has 6 congregation and several groups-there is negative growth.

when you factor in the demographically aging folk and the many who have already passed away, i don't know where they get the 8 million.. i know that most of the growth is from the developing countries, but still i think they are fudging their numbers.

OneEyedJoe

The numbers are fudged to be sure - especially if you're counting "peak publishers" where they double/triple count publishers (usually in august) who are hounded into turning in time for past months that they "forgot" to turn in. Probably a lot of these are 1-hour slips that are either fabricated by the publisher or by the elders to avoid getting the 3rd degree from the CO.

There are lots of folks here who talk about turning in fake time, or their group overseer turning in fake time on their behalf. I'm sure it's not an isolated occurrence. Plus when you consider that they can count time for working construction or for "studying" with children (which is often just saying "look at this pretty bug that jehovah made" a few times a day) or counting 15 minutes for people in a nursing home because their kid put a magazine on their lap and wheeled them around. They're definitely below 8 million active JWs.

If you want to exclude active JWs that no longer believe but are stuck in the cult, there's another group that's probably not an insignificant size.

312

Mass disassociation pact...

by freemindfade in

any takers?

we can pick a date and pull the plug?

lol .

OneEyedJoe

I'd love to but for the time being I'm not going to DA for my still-in wife's sake.

42

Why are GMO's bad?

by cappytan in

jw
friends

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh4bi60alzu.

first person to say, "this scishow episode is a monsanto conspiracy," is a rotten egg..

OneEyedJoe

Giving away GMO seeds was not my point it is an issue of making farmers dependent on monopolized seeds.

This is a very different argument - now it seems that you're suggesting that Monsanto should fall under some sort of anti-trust action. From what little I know, this seems reasonable. Your original statement, however, was an argument essentially stating that GMO R&D was an endeavor that did not deserve to be profitable in and of itself.

42

Why are GMO's bad?

by cappytan in

jw
friends

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh4bi60alzu.

first person to say, "this scishow episode is a monsanto conspiracy," is a rotten egg..

OneEyedJoe

Monsanto would not go bankrupt because it already had a steady stream of income from other products such as selling non-GMO hybrid seeds to farmers.

That's not a valid argument. That's like saying Honda should have to give away motorcycles for free and then arguing that this is fair because they still make plenty of money off their car sales.

9

Old is Becoming New Again?

by Tazemanian-devil in

is it just me, or does it seem like jw.org is returning to some very old methods from rutherford's era?.

- their carts / booths is very reminiscent of the sandwich board system, including the fact that they no longer personally engage.

- showing videos via the tablet / smartphone is almost exactly like the phonograph method they used.

OneEyedJoe

At the 2014 convention, Loesch got up there and was talking about playing videos for people at the door and said something about people asking if we were going back to old methods - like playing recorded sermons on a record player at the door - just with modernized technology. His retort was a blind assertion that this was totally different and just the standard reply of something like: "aren't we thankful for how quickly Jehovah's organization is moving and keeping pace with modern technology?" and of course an applause break follows and no one realizes that he completely failed to make a distinction between playing videos and the old days of playing sermons.

Another thing they've gone back to, but I'm not sure how much it's being used, is the modern day equivalent of the old testimony cards. Now they have the business cards with a QR code that'll take you to jw.borg.

I wonder when we'll be seeing waves of sound cars driving through the neighborhoods again?

2

Does the Annual Meeting take place at the Kingdom Hall, or Assembly Hall?

by Faithful Witness in

i was never a jw, so i never was invited to one of their annual meetings in october.

are they held at assembly halls or at the local kingdom halls?

what day and time is the annual meeting this year?

OneEyedJoe

When they handed out bibles was the only time they've had it at assembly halls or kingdom halls (in most places it was a combination of both). That was 2 years ago. I haven't heard anything about them making arrangements to watch it live again this year so I'm guessing it'll just be something online for the uber-dubs to brag about having watched and feel superior to the rest.

135

Latest Leaked BOE letter to Elders Oct. 4th

by Watchtower-Free in

october 4, 2015. to all congregations.

re: new provisions announced atannual meeting.

dear brothers:.

OneEyedJoe

Wow, the elimination of the school is likely going to make many JWs happy. Of course, those presentations will still need to be handled and you know they aren't going to be done by elders. I wonder if they will have a procedure for determining who can do the presentations? Of course they will, they micromanage everything. Very interesting to see how that plays out.

I think someone else said it - but the change to the TMS is probably due to the lack of qualified men.

I think the Pew survey last time around showed that JWs in the US jumped to being 2/3rds women - now they can use women for "demonstrations" but they're not "teaching" like when men give a talk from a podium. Now all the parts can be handled by women if needed, but they don't look like they're capitulating to people complaining about the misogynist system they have and they hide the real problem - the lack of qualified men.

135

Latest Leaked BOE letter to Elders Oct. 4th

by Watchtower-Free in

october 4, 2015. to all congregations.

re: new provisions announced atannual meeting.

dear brothers:.

OneEyedJoe

Another thought on the bi-monthly literature:

Many have long speculated that they would drop the public watchtower since the name carries so much baggage from all their failed predictions over the years that they want to separate themselves from it. Theories have ranged from things like a new jw.borg magazine or just to using only the Awake! moniker for the public. Well they're one step closer to that now. They get the R/F used to offering only one magazine at a time, and every other month they'll be using only the Awake magazine by itself. They're one step away from eliminating the watchtower completely and just using the Awake magazine, and all done at a slow enough rate that no one will notice.

When they downsized the awake, they said it was because they were going to focus more on bible topics instead of current events and this created an overlap with the public watchtower. Well now they've got one hell of an overlap - there's essentially no difference between the two magazines now. The road is paved for them to announce in a year or two that they're either discontinuing the WT altogether or replacing both magazines with something by a new name.

This puts them in a much better position for the future. JWs are conditioned to expect to find "apostate lies" all over the internet, and if they stop using WT and awake names for the magazines, it'll require one more step of explanation before people will be able to see that sites like jwfacts are presenting accurate information from the cult's old literature. Instead I suspect there will be many that perhaps stumble upon it and then only have their preconceived notions confirmed when they see that most of the references are from magazines they don't even recognize the name of. They'll assume it's made up by apostates who can't even get their facts straight.

29

Impression of Leaked Letter Regarding Annual Meeting

by freemindfade in

the letter that watchtower free put up was very interesting.

here is my impression.. the watchtower is becoming more and more geared towards idiots.

the midweek meeting has a stupid name, and the parts sound equally dumb.

OneEyedJoe

Can anyone think of a financial gain in recruiting lower IQ members?

Off the top of my head - stupid recruits are better than no recruits. Also, it could be a method to get their foot in the door to hopefully recruit other family members.

I've seen it said on this forum so many times, but I didn't think I'd be saying it so soon - I've been out 5 months and I don't recognize the cult that I left. I guess there was a trend leading towards this for a while, but the cult is just so completely watered down and the focus is so clearly on emotional manipulation now compared to at least somewhat pseudo-intellectual content before. At least currently with the bible highlights someone can research any topic they wanted and give a comment from that week's reading - they've shut that down and now provide the questions. I guess they heard of too many people commenting on things like genocide and how the desert god couldn't defeat the people that had iron chariots.

Another thought - it sounds like they're trying to rebrand slightly and make this more like a youth church group. I've never been involved with such a thing, but the names of the parts sound like something I'd expect to hear about from the rabid bible-thumpers that I knew in grade school. Can't put my finger on it, but it really seems to me like they're trying to better appeal to the younger generation.

75

Brooklyn Layoffs and Halt to Kingdom Hall construction projects

by James Jack in

a good source just just told me that at morning worship today that the governing body announced that a total of 1600 bethelites will be let get go and not transferred to warwich when the last property is sold in brooklyn and all kingdom hall building projects are on hold for at least a year so that all the focus will be on the preaching work.

OneEyedJoe

all Kingdom Hall building projects are on hold for at least a year so that all the focus will be on the Preaching Work.

It's almost like they're reacting directly to John's thread:

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/479610001/wt-slow-ly-changing-importance-door-door-preaching-work-something-more-profitable